During the middle of the Eocene, about 40 million years ago...

On Nov 6, 4:26*am, oriel36 wrote:

that when readers here can actually see *how Uranus turns to the
central Sun as a means to visually affirm the slow and uneven turning
of a planet as a signature of its orbital motion and *which is crucial
for explaining the *seasons when allied with daily rotation, it
exasperates me no end -

http://astro.berkeley.edu/~imke/Infr..._2001_2005.jpg

The daily rotation of Uranus to the central Sun follows the line of
the Equatorial ring which in turn acts like an orbital longitude
meridian,

Actually, the situation of the planet Uranus is a very bad example for
your view of planetary rotation.

Let us suppose - hypothetically, and I know you don't like that - the
Earth had a strong inclination like that of Uranus. That would mean in
your terminology that most of the Earth would have "polar" seasons
instead of "equatorial" seasons - being dark 24 hours for much of the
year and light 24 hours for much of the year.

An observer on the Equator of this planet (and likely only a narrow
strip around the Equator would be habitable) - what would he see?

Because the Sun's apparent motion in the sky due to the Earth's orbit
around the Sun would now be like a polar orbit instead of an
equatorial one, instead of experiencing a natural noon cycle with an
apparent period of 24 hours, he would find that the time between
successive natural noons was closer to 23 hours and 56 minutes. During
part of the year, it would be slightly shorter, and during the other
half of the year, slightly longer.

However, at the two solstices, day and night would exchange places,
and this jump would make up for the difference between the sidereal
"day" of 23 hours and 56 minutes and the synodic period of 24 hours.

I think they would just take holidays around the solstices to get
their sleep cycles in step rather than living with clocks showing an
average 24 hour day the year around.

John Savard